


Settling

by Para



Series: Heterodyne [6]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: F/M, really more pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5395502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Para/pseuds/Para
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agatha arrives on Castle Wulfenbach, and Gil gets to show her to the school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settling

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more fics in this series that are set earlier, I just wanted a nicely fluffy one to accompany With Mercy. On which note, if you are reading With Mercy and haven't read the chapter posted today yet, it is supposed to be a painful one so you might want to save the fluff to read second.
> 
> Also, Gil is _such a dork_.
> 
> [Radovana](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4676600/chapters/10892501) [Nikolayev](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4676600/chapters/12011681) still belongs to the ever-patient [Adiduck](http://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck), as does the unnamed [Amator](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4676600/chapters/11725808). (But really no one else would be stupid enough to say that. It has to be him.)
> 
> Also, [lilithqueen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithqueen/pseuds/lilithqueen) gets credit for knowing that the associations people had with pink at the time Girl Genius takes place would have A: not been "girly" and B: actually been _even more amusing_.

The ship they took up to Castle Wulfenbach was nothing special—they didn’t really _have_ special ships, for one thing, at least not in the way of being fancy, and if they had Gil thought his father probably would only have allowed people he especially hated onto them, in case they were shot down due to being standout targets. Still, they went on an army transport ship, instead of one meant for ferrying people to and from the Castle. As the passengers consisted of the Baron, Gil, Agatha Heterodyne, Punch, Judy, a handful of Punch and Judy’s construct friends, and a few hundred jägers, it was probably appropriate.

Gil hadn’t been particularly impressed with Agatha at their first meeting; she’d been hesitant, clumsy, and seemed lacking in self control. She’d been nice, certainly, he didn’t see any particular problems with her, but she wasn’t very impressive. She seemed to have become a bit better put together in the five days since then; she was less quiet, less hesitant, faster to think of things and to say them. She still seemed a bit young, flitting about the ship as jägers pointed things out to her.

On the other hand, she was clearly most interested in the weaponry. Gil hadn’t heard excited squealing like that since Zulenna had discovered a litter of especially fluffy kittens had snuck into the student dorm. Agatha even asked his father if she could try shooting some of the larger guns, and then went off rambling about trajectories and percussive force and recoil and how death rays would be far more efficient while the Baron stared, then covered his mouth with his hand, shoulders shaking. The jägers grinned and encouraged her and in a minute she was off again, saying something about using the wind speed to make bullets fly faster. Punch and Judy trailed behind her, sharing fond looks that seemed to say this was normal, and occasionally distracting Agatha before she could get near any storage locker with tools that would allow her to start taking things apart.

“Are Heterodynes normally like that?” Gil certainly didn’t remember acting much like that during _his_ breakthrough. He’d been much more frantic than she seemed, but a lot quieter—he’d had to sneak around, after all. And it certainly hadn’t lasted so long.

“While in a fugue, Bill was. Barry could be more intense.” The Baron was watching her too, wearing a somewhat sadder version of Punch and Judy’s fond expressions. “Though he was often cheerful as well.”

“Oh.”

“Once we reach the Castle, I would like you to show her to the school and introduce her,” the Baron said.

Gil turned to stare, but didn’t see anything telling in his father’s expression. “Me?”

“Yes.” The Baron looked away from Agatha. His expression for Gil was stern, but not unusually so. “I would like it to be made clear that she is under our protection. I will be going to the school to speak to her later, but now,” he sounded resigned, “I have a great deal of paperwork that Boris will be wanting completed.”

Gil had spent the last five days trailing Boris around Beetleburg and listening to him grumble about the paperwork his father wasn’t doing, so he certainly couldn’t argue with that. “I will, Father.”

The Baron must not have been _that_ concerned about his paperwork, as he led them all to the rooms that were to be Punch and Judy’s. At least, all the non-jägers; only a handful of jägers continued following them, while most dispersed in various directions through the Castle. They passed a lot of other jägers on the way to Punch and Judy’s rooms though, all of which stared or followed for a short distance. Agatha paused to greet each and every one of them, which was kind of her, but made the walk very slow. Boris seemed to be the only one who minded the delay; he’d caught up to them with three stuffed folders of paperwork for the Baron halfway to Punch and Judy’s rooms, and spent the rest of the trip looking exasperated.

There was a little bit of exploration once they reached the rooms—larger than average but nothing unusual in Gil’s opinion. Agatha, on the other hand, went into a full fugue again, rushing around to examine the work that went into making what was essentially a series of metal boxes habitable and… well, Gil thought most of what she said was about how to do it more efficiently. Judy got her focused again once their luggage had been moved into the rooms by promising that she could examine them later in any case.

The group split up then; Punch and Judy stayed in their rooms to unpack (with one of the jägers that had started trailing them to show them to the school afterwards), a passing Wulfenbach administrator was asked (by the Baron, which really wasn’t asking at all) to show Punch and Judy’s friends to one of the offices where they could be assigned jobs, and the Baron finally accepted the paperwork Boris had been trying to hand him for half an hour. He walked off scowling at it and Boris followed, looking politely satisfied.

Agatha had already gotten distracted questioning one of the jägers about the pink glow that surrounded her. “—some sort of chemical reaction? I wonder if you’re _producing_ the light or _storing_ it. Do you have to eat anything specific to maintain it? Or be in the sun regularly?”

“Nah, nottink like dose.”

“Hmm.” Agatha looked—well, her expression was about as classically spark as it could be, even if the rest of her looked particularly normal in contrast. The jäger, despite being the focus of a fuguing spark, mostly looked patient. “Then you’re _probably_ producing the light. I wonder what sort of chemicals—oh, they could be completely different ones than usual, there are lots of things that make light that are toxic to humans, but I bet you’d be fine—I wonder why it’s pink….”

“Iz becawze Rada iz verra _sopheesticateed_ und _sensiteeve_ ,” another jäger said, audibly gleeful. “Und _delic_ —ack!”

The jäger stopped talking in order to throw himself out of the way as—Gil felt safe assuming—Rada lunged after him, snarling something about showing him sensitive, along with a number of insults Gil hadn’t heard the equals of since Paris. He blinked.

Agatha looked horrified. “What are you _doing_? You’ll hurt him, stop it!”

Rada froze. As one of her hands was pinning the other jäger into a newly made dent in the wall by his throat that didn’t actually help a whole lot. (Although it did help some—that looked like a nasty punch he’d just missed getting to the face.) “He vould heal,” Rada said, but dropped him and stepped away.

Huh. Gil hadn’t known jägers could bruise, but this one definitely could. Not that he seemed bothered by it; he was still grinning like he couldn’t help himself even as he started massaging the bruises on his neck.

Agatha did not appear reassured. “That’s not the point! You’re not supposed to hurt people!”

“…Ve kind ov are, ektually, Meestress,” Rada said as a few of the other jägers traded worried looks.

“Oh—well—I guess that’s true.” Agatha was still frowning. “But not each _other_.”

“Iz goot practice,” the other jäger offered. He had finally stopped grinning. Agatha looked at him, eyebrows knitted together like she couldn’t decide whether to believe him or not.

“Yah, iz all friendly,” a third jäger added. “No veapons or ennyting, zo novun gets hurt for real.”

“She dun need—”

“Shh!”

“You could probably talk to the jäger Generals about it later,” Gil said. A few of the jägers gave him relieved or suspicious looks; Agatha jumped like she’d forgotten he was there. “But they really do fight all the time, and I haven’t heard of it being a problem before.”

“Oh.” Agatha still looked less than convinced. “Well… try not to break the ship, then, I guess.” She eyed the newest jäger-sized dent in the wall. “I think I could fix that….”

The Baron hadn’t actually told Gil to redirect Agatha from any of her ideas, but a new spark experimenting on Castle Wulfenbach was probably best discouraged anyway. Especially if it started with something that seemed as innocuous as a dented wall. “If you’d like I can show you to a lab after you’ve seen the school.”

“Oh!” Agatha brightened. “A real lab? That sounds wonderful!”

“Of course! What else?” He could probably assign her one of the student labs, but they were smaller, with much more limited resources, although still technically “real” labs. Hm, there was a nice large lab next to his flight lab that no one was using, he could give her that one, it could be modified easily enough if she was interested in flight too, plus one of the student labs so she’d have something closer when she wanted to do something quickly…. “It’s one of the things my father does here, give new sparks space and materials to experiment with. He thinks it’s best for them to learn what they can do in a controlled setting before they go running around Europa without any external safety measures.” Of course, most of the ones that weren’t destined to rule somewhere stayed on Castle Wulfenbach permanently, the Baron didn’t want loose sparks running around Europa even if they knew their limits, but since Agatha _was_ going to rule that wouldn’t apply to her.

“Ohhhhh. That’s really smart, actually.” Agatha stared into space for a moment, chewing absently on her lip and, surprisingly, not evidently fuguing. Gil waited until she blinked back to focus on him. “What’s the school like?”

Gil smiled, and offered her an arm. “I’ll be happy to show you, Miss Heterodyne.”

She smiled back and accepted it, without even seeming uncomfortable with the name. “Why thank you, Herr Wulfenbach.”

For a brief, unnerving second, Gil wondered when exactly his father had returned. For the following, terrifying second, he wondered how he’d managed to be mistaken for his father. “Oh, God, that sounds like my father. Please, just call me Gil.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him. “Well, you should call me Agatha, then.”

Gil let himself grin at her. He was supposed to be making her feel at home, right? “Why, I’ll be delighted to.” She giggled.

The jägers fell in behind them as they walked. It was slow—Agatha still wanted to stop to say hello to every jäger they passed—but the school wasn’t too far away, and Gil pointed out interesting things and directions to important places along the way.

He was in the middle of pointing out the way to one of the kitchens (one that exclusively made pastries, unless the Baron was feeding some area that had been struck by disaster and needed massive amounts of long-lasting food made quickly, in which case it mostly produced grumbling) when he realized she wasn’t really paying attention. _That_ wasn’t really a surprise—Gil was avoiding pointing out anything she might find too interesting, like the engine rooms, not that it had stopped her from nearly trying to disassemble one of the light fixtures along the way—but she didn’t seem to be sparking either; she was walking quietly, occasionally glancing over at him in between staring absently ahead. “Miss—er, Agatha?”

She jumped slightly, then focused on him. She started twisting her hands together like she was feeling nervous. “Oh! I’m sorry, I was just thinking.”

“What about?” There wasn’t much that seemed able to distract her from sparking so far. Or perhaps more accurately, there was very little that wouldn’t inspire a fugue for her. That was _probably_ the breakthrough, even if it was more extreme than usual.

“Oh… well….” She twisted her fingers together again, then dropped her hands firmly to her sides. “You… said you didn’t know who you were either?”

“Oh. Yes. I mean, no, I didn’t.” Gil ran a hand through his hair. “I grew up in the school here, see, I was one of the first students here—well, obviously, now.” She smiled like she was trying not to laugh at him. “But all the other kids were some sort of royalty or nobility, or the children of powerful sparks, and no one knew who I was, so… well, I got picked on, sometimes.” All the time.

“What—just because you didn’t know who your parents were?” Agatha was frowning, like she was worried that someone might still be picking on him.

“Mostly because they thought I must know, and not be saying anything because my parents were embarrassing.” It hadn’t made any real difference, though. “Or just because they wanted to pick on someone and I didn’t have parents that could get them in trouble with their families, maybe.” Huh. Gil hadn’t thought of that possibility before, but it would make more sense for some of them. The ones that hadn’t ever been stuck up about descent and hierarchy. “Most of them stopped when I started trying to make friends with them, and anyway _you_ shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

Agatha looked offended. Gil couldn’t guess why. “That’s not the problem! I’m… well, I’m used to that.” She started twisting her fingers together again. “I wasn’t… very popular, in Beetleburg, the locket made me… really stupid. And kind of weird. Anyway, they shouldn’t be mean at all!”

“Er….” Gil had no idea how to respond to that. “Well, they weren’t really that bad? And they haven’t done anything recently.” Including _answer his letters_ , which was the only thing they _could_ have done in the last four years, but Gil didn’t think mentioning that would help.

“Hmm.” Agatha was giving him the same unconvinced look that she’d given the jägers earlier. Fortunately she seemed to decide to let it go. “How did you find out, then?”

“Well, I used to spend a lot of time exploring the ship—it was still half built, then, so it was really easy to climb around places I wasn’t supposed to be.” Maybe he shouldn’t be giving her that idea? It probably wasn’t an issue. She was an adult, she wouldn’t fit through half the places Gil used to climb, and the Castle _was_ finished now (if with upgrades constantly being made), so a lot of the others were gone. And she was an ally anyway, not a hostage. “And eventually I found the vault where the Baron kept all the records on students, including their families. So I snuck in there, and it had this story about my father being a minor spark who got turned into sausages by his own monster, and, uh….” Gil ran a hand through his hair again. “I sort of… ran off crying, and I ended up getting myself lost… which I did a lot, actually, but I didn’t feel like exploring until I found my way back and I didn’t really _care_ about anything just then, so I just wandered around until one of the guards found me, and _he_ hauled me off to the Baron’s office, and… I’m not sure why he decided to tell me then, actually.” Gil had just been desperately grateful to be told; he hadn’t thought to wonder why. Maybe it was because of Tarvek, if the Baron realized that Tarvek had been using Gil to help him spy, and that Tarvek would want Gil dead as soon as he learned who Gil was. Gil certainly wouldn’t have told the Baron where to find Tarvek’s hiding place if he’d still thought Tarvek would be his friend forever.

“Did you get to tell anyone?”

Gil shook his head. “Not until after I got back from university. It was nice to know, though.”

“Hmm.” Agatha was gazing off ahead of them again. “I wish I’d known, but I don’t know, maybe I _would_ have said something by accident… oh, hello!” She hurried ahead, catching a jäger’s attention before he finished crossing the hallway. Gil hung back to wait for her. “I’m Agatha, what’s your name?”

He was visibly startled. “Uh—Hy’m Stosh.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Agatha said.

“Iz… nize to meet hyu too?” Stosh still looked uncertain.

“Oh. Um.” Agatha smiled, a little shyly. “I’m Agatha Heterodyne. Specifically.”

Stosh’s eyes snapped up to the jägers that had been trailing Agatha. Most of them nodded and his eyes went back to Agatha, suddenly adoring. “Iz _true_? Hy hed heard, but….” He stepped back, still staring like he couldn’t quite believe Agatha was real, and dropped to kneel in front of her. “Hy am—Hy am _so_ glad to haff hyu beck, Mistress. Ve ken go home….”

“Oh—you don’t have to do that, really, it’s okay.” Agatha leaned over slightly, like she was about to try to help the jäger back to his feet. “I’m not used to—all the kneeling, and things, I really don’t mind if you don’t.”

Stosh bounced obediently back to his feet. His expression might have been described as beaming, except for the number of teeth. “Ve ken go home! Hy ken see mine keeds again, Hy tink Hy haff grandkeeds now….”

“The Baron said we’re on the way to Mechanicsburg now,” Agatha said. “So I can meet Castle Heterodyne. So you should see them in… um…” she turned to look at Gil.

He estimated distances, and whether his father would order the Castle to top speed for the trip. “By tomorrow afternoon, I think. We can't fly at top speed for very long—” At least, that they could was a very well-kept secret, and there was no way the Baron would give _that_ away for anything short of the Empire being about to collapse. “—but if we make part of the trip that way, maybe tomorrow morning.” Stosh grinned wider.

“Und until den, hyu schtill haff a job,” one of the jägers that had been following Agatha said. “Or hyu vouldn’t haff left de beer hall.”

Stosh waved the idea off casually. “Pff! Dot vas for de Baron. Ve haff a Heterodyne now!”

Agatha giggled. “Well, yes, but I’d rather you did keep doing your job, at least until he can hire someone to replace you. I don’t have a job for you right now, and I’d rather the whole Empire not fall apart just because everyone stopped working for the Baron.”

“Vould be lots of fightink if it did,” Stosh said.

“Well, yes, but that would make it a lot harder for me to finish my studies,” Agatha said. “And if I can't do that I won’t be nearly as good a spark as I’d like to be.”

“Ho, yah, dot’s important. Hokay, hyu gots it, Mistress, Hy vill go und guard de crazy schott guy.” He saluted—huh, that was the least sloppy salute Gil had ever seen a jäger give—and continued the way he’d been going, much more energetically.

“Crazy smart guy?” Agatha wondered.

Gil shrugged. “There are some sparks that tend to get _so_ caught up in the madness place that they cause a lot of destruction before they get out of it, even when they don’t mean to. My father usually keeps them here under supervision, so they can invent without hurting anyone.” Supervision more often meant a few well-trained and not easily minionized scientists who would be more likely to recognize if the spark was doing anything too dangerous, but Gil couldn’t think what other spark would need guarding. Stosh had been heading toward the inside of the Castle, so he probably wasn’t going to take one of the transports over to a prison ship.

“Oh. That’s nice of him.”

“I think so.” It was a lot nicer than what most people did to sparks that went on a rampage, certainly. Or sparks that didn’t, sometimes. Gil pointed to the hallway that Stosh had come out of, crossing the one they’d been following. “The school’s just a little bit further this way.”

“Oh, right.” Agatha turned toward the hallway, and they started walking again. “So what’s the school like?”

“It will probably be more like tutors, really—the classes are mostly for the youngest kids, once you’ve learned the basics of everything, you mostly get to choose your own subjects and study on your own schedule.” Or go to a university, if the Baron trusted you off the Castle. “The teachers are available to answer any questions and suggest things to study, and you’re expected to show that you’re learning something in most areas regularly, but mostly what you learn is up to you.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “I don’t know what I need to learn, though.”

“Most of the tutors will be able to help, or my father. And most of the older students, actually, a lot of them are going to rule cities. And this is it.” The door to the school wasn’t anything fancy; it mostly stood out by being the only door on that side of the hallway for a long way. Gil pushed it open.

It looked normal. The students scattered around the common area were a bit older, and a couple were new; a few of the tables were new, while the rest had additional burns and scratches. If he’d looked, the books they were reading would probably be new. “Hey guys! Where’s Theo?”

“Over here—Gil!” Theo stood up from one of the tables to the side. “See what you can do with that problem, Itto, I’ll be back in a minute. And here I was starting to think you wouldn’t ever come see us!”

Well, Gil wouldn’t have. “You could’ve come to see me, you know.”

“No one knew where you were,” Sleipnir said, making her way over from the other side of the room. She looked like she was much closer to being annoyed than Theo was. Which was unfair, _Gil_ wasn’t the one who hadn’t written.

“You could have asked Von Pinn.”

“She always said you were busy,” Theo said.

“Well—I usually _am_ , but it’s not like you can’t interrupt.” If Gil was with his father, they’d know better; if he was in his labs, Wooster could keep them out if he had to, but usually there wasn’t anything that would be at risk if he stopped working on it. He didn’t do much else, recently.

Slepinir folded her arms and sniffed. “Okay, you get to show us where to find you before you leave, then. Now who’s this?” Her grin should have warned Gil, but didn’t give him enough time to cut her off. “New girlfriend?”

Gil immediately felt himself blushing. At least he wasn’t the only one; Agatha had also turned red. “No! Definitely not. _I don’t have a girlfriend_. I haven't had a girlfriend!” Sleipnir was smirking at him. Gil scowled at her.

Theo… well, alright, Gil probably wouldn’t have been able to tell he was hiding laughter if he hadn’t grown up with him. “Who is she, then?” He gave Agatha a charming smile. “It would be a shame not to learn the name of such a lovely lady.” Agatha blushed again and smiled back.

Gil rolled his eyes. “This is Agatha Heterodyne. She’s going to be a student too for a while.”

There was an instant in which the common room froze. Right, Gil had forgotten that most people still hadn’t heard Heterodynes existed again. “What?” a few students’ voices asked.

“No way,” another said.

Agatha was looking uncomfortable with the attention, so Gil stepped in the door (and a little bit in front of her in the process). She followed and the jägers came after her, not entirely friendly grins directed around the room. “Of course! My father and all the jägers recognize her. _And_ she’s a spark.” That should take care of anyone who might have dared harass her if she’d just been a Heterodyne. “And Theo’s cousin, actually.”

Theo beamed at her. “Really! That’s wonderful, I haven’t had a cousin before.”

“Neither have I.” Agatha looked shy again, it was kind of cute.

…Wait.

Well, she was pretty….

“So, uh—Agatha.” Gil coughed. “Your things should have been delivered here already… Theo?”

“Oh, yeah, they came in about half an hour ago,” Sleipnir said. “And I’m your roommate, actually! C’mon, I’ll show you.”

“Oh, thank you,” Agatha said.

“Right. I’ll just, uh, go see about that lab while you get unpacked,” Gil said, and took a hopefully subtle step toward the door. “See which ones are free now and, uh, all that.”

Agatha gave him a distracted smile as she and the jägers followed Sleipnir across the common room. “Thank you! I really want to build things, a lab will be wonderful.” The jägers gave Gil much more amused and knowing looks. So did Theo.

“It’s no problem,” Gil said, and took another step. Oh good, there was the door, he could open it now. “Shouldn’t take long at all, I’ll be back soon.”

“You’d better!” Sleipnir called. “You’re not getting away without showing me where to find you!”

Gil did _not_ flee the room. He just left very quickly before anyone could say anything else.

Oh God. He leaned against the wall and buried his face in his hands as soon as he got out. She was pretty, and a spark, and not insane or evil, and his father didn’t even hate her. Gil was in _so much trouble_.


End file.
